Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series) (15 page)

"It was my impression Casey thought Will George poisoned those horses," I said carefully.

Martha Welch snorted. "It's a rough thing to say about somebody who's dead, but Casey was a damn fool. He was going around telling everyone that Will George did it, which is obviously ridiculous, and when he couldn't make enough trouble that way, he accused me of poisoning my own horse."

I stared at her. Somehow that didn't go with the Casey I had known. Hardheaded, egotistical, abrasive, yes-but making trouble just for the sake of it, no.

She was still talking. "Will George would never have poisoned those horses, any more than I would. I called him and told him what Casey was saying about him. He just laughed."

That was interesting. Will George had known that Casey suspected him-Will George who had turned his quiet, blue-eyed gaze on me and said only, "He was a good hand," of Casey. Will George was not a man who would rattle easily.

Martha Welch, on the other hand, seemed quite "rattle-able." I tried to picture her poisoning the horses, cutting the cinch, braining Casey with a rock. It was possible. There was a sense of suppressed violence in this woman, only half hidden under her polished exterior. She was strung tight as a piano wire; if the wire snapped, what sort of fury would be unleashed?

"You are planning on signing the insurance forms, aren't you?" She was fixing me with a steely eye.

Lonny smiled at me behind his drink; he'd very carefully kept out of this conversation, I'd noticed, as he had the last one. All this amateur detective work probably wasn't something he wanted to be involved with. He looked amused, though.

"The horse was poisoned," I told Martha Welch frankly. "But I have no reason to believe you had anything to do with it."

"You're damn right I didn't. I don't believe it was poisoned, anyway. All I'm interested in is that you sign the paperwork stating it needed to be destroyed."

I considered arguing the point that poisoning was indisputable given the test results, and gave it up as a bad idea. She wouldn't listen.

"The horse did need to be put down, I'll agree to that," I said calmly.

"I'll have the company send you the paperwork right away." She took a final swallow of her drink and stood up. Clearly, as far as she was concerned, the interview was at an end.

Draining the last of my chardonnay and taking a regretful glance at the view, I followed her to the door, Lonny accompanying me silently.

When we were back in the truck he looked over at me. "What do you think?" I could hear the humor in his voice.

"Beats me. She's got a motive, all right. I can't check her for an alibi, which would be the next step; I'm not a cop. I need to interest that detective in finding out where some of these people were when Casey was killed. That would help."

"Good luck."

"Thanks a lot. I can tell you don't think she'll be interested." I looked at Lonny curiously. "Don't you care? Don't you want Casey's murderer, if there was a murderer, to be caught?"

"Care? Sure, I care. But unlike you, I don't think he was murdered. And if he was, I still say, I'll pick the girlfriend every time."

Chapter FIFTEEN

Renewed gusts of rain spattered the windshield as I drove slowly down the loops and twists of Mt. Madonna Road. Evening was closing in and the sky was a dark and unrelieved gray. I felt a sense of depression. All my detective work hadn't come to much. I was hungry and tired of driving and I wanted to be cheered up.

As if he'd read my thoughts, Lonny asked, "How about a home-cooked meal?"

"Sounds great."

"Spaghetti and red wine-real stormy night food. In front of the fire. I make a mean spaghetti." I smiled at him gratefully.

"You're on."

Lonny's house welcomed us when I pulled up in front of it; he'd left a couple of lamps on and the curtains open, and the cozy front room appeared a safe haven in the blowing ram.

I got out of the truck feeling stiff and sore, and Blue slid out after me, stiffer than I was. He hobbled around in the rain peeing on my tires, then wagged his stump of a tail to indicate he wanted back in the cab.

"Long day, huh, boy," I told him, scratching him behind the ears.

He licked my hand and curled up on the seat of the truck with a grunt, apparently prepared to nap a few more hours. There were some advantages to being an old dog, I thought, as I cracked the windows a hair. Patience being one of them.

Walking through the front door of Lonny's house I was greeted with a meow by the big pinkish beige cat who had jumped on his lap the other night. Sam, I remembered. Following the cat was a creature no larger than my hand, the color and texture of an animated dust ball. It mewed, giving me a clue to its identity.

"What's that?" I laughed. "That's a cat," Lonny said with a proprietary grin. "What do you mean 'What's that?' That's Gandalf."

The little creature was mewing and rubbing itself on Lonny's legs in a miniature imitation of Sam, who seemed to regard it with tolerant disdain. Lonny petted both cats and picked up the little one. "I found him two nights ago. I was at the barn feeding the horses their dinner; it was black dark, no moon at all, and I heard this meowing. I couldn't see a thing, but I tracked him down by all the noise he was making. He was just marching along the road screeching his head off. I scooped him up and brought him home."

"Lucky for him." I petted the little cat, who purred at me from his seat in Lonny's palm; his eyes squinted shut in a cat smile of happiness.

"Sit down by the woodstove, if you like," Lonny told me, taking in, I suppose, my weary expression. "I'll bring you a glass of wine and build us a fire."

"Thanks." I settled myself on the couch, accepted a glass of chianti, and watched him lay split kindling and strike a match. The primitive ritual was deeply comforting; small flames flickered and grew until the wood was crackling happily and orangey fire shadows danced on the walls. Safety and warmth in the threatening night. I sipped the almost bitter red wine and listened to the rain on the roof and felt a growing sense of contentment.

Lonny started making spaghetti in the kitchen and the simmering sweet smell of onions in olive oil crept into the living room. During a break in the storm I fed Lonny's horses, then sat and watched the fire some more, sipping a second glass of chianti and talking to Lonny as he made dinner, which proved to be terrific. His spaghetti was like a stew, thick with spicy Italian sausage, bell pepper, onion and mushrooms. When we were done I brought Blue into the house on his leash, feeling that he'd spent enough of the day cooped up in the truck, but unwilling to trust the cats to his mercies. Blue liked cats just fine; he especially liked them when they were running away from him.

Lonny and I sat in companionable silence by the fire for a while, watching Gandalf play with Blue. Confined by his leash, the old dog was no danger; he snapped gently at the kitten, who didn't seem in the least afraid of him. The tiny gray paws batted at Blue's old speckled muzzle, and the two animals seemed content to play predator/prey games together, with no intent or fear of harm.

"Do you want to stay?" Lonny was nothing if not direct.

"I don't know." I felt deeply peaceful and realized I did want to stay; at least, I didn't want to leave. It struck me that the time had passed for saying no to Lonny, if I wanted to keep growing closer to him rather than start pulling away. But I was still scared of the consequences of that closeness.

"When you're ready. I want to be close to you, Gail, I want to love you. But I want it when it's right. Tonight let's just sleep together."

"All right," I told him, taking his hand. "If you think we can."

"We can." He grinned. "Once."

Which was how I came to spend the night in Lonny's bed, pressed up against the warmth of his body, while the rain pattered on the roof and the light from the fire flickered through the open door. Somehow-I never really understood how-sex was present but kept comfortably at bay, and a sense of peaceful connectedness grew in me until I relaxed and fell asleep, happier than I could remember being.

I woke up the next morning with my back pressed against Lonny's stomach, spoon fashion, and his arms wrapped around me. This might have led to more interesting things except it was four-thirty in the morning and the alarm which had woken me was shrilling insistently.

Lonny gave me a final affectionate rub and got out of bed. "I'm leaving this morning for the mountains, did I tell you?"

No doubt I looked rumpled, I thought distractedly, but there wasn't much I could do about it. "You said you used to be a packer; that's all you've ever mentioned, and you're obviously not a packer now."

"Well I am, actually. I own a pack station. Crazy Horse Creek. I don't run it anymore; I've got a partner who does that. I go up every month or so to check in with him, make sure things are going all right. I'll be gone for most of this week." There was a tone in Lonny's voice that was hard to place. Hesitant. Tentative.

"You own a pack station? That sounds interesting," I prodded.

Lonny seemed to be watching me closely; the expression in his eyes was vulnerable. "It is interesting to me. It broke up my marriage, though. My wife did not want to be married to a packer, and she didn't want to live in a rundown old resort in the mountains. What she wanted was a life on the coast with a man who had a respectable profession. It's one of the reasons I retired. Didn't help, though." He laughed briefly. "She left me to live with a doctor."

"Is that the reason you didn't want to tell me what you did for a living?" I asked curiously.

"Sure. You're a vet; you've got eight years' worth of college education, you're a doctor in your own right. I quit high school when I was sixteen and made my money packing horses."

I chose my words carefully. "That doesn't matter, as far as I'm concerned. And I'd say you made pretty good money packing horses."

Lonny smiled. "I did at that. Crazy Horse Creek is the biggest pack station in the Sierras now; it's making a good living for both my partner and me. It wasn't always that way. When I was in my twenties, I worked round the clock, and we didn't have a nickel to spare. It was hard on Sara."

Sara, I thought. Her name is Sara. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable, as though I were lying in Sara's bed.

Lonny smiled down at me. "What are you going to do today? Keep on playing detective?"

"Oh, I don't know," I grimaced up at him from the bed. "There's so much I need to find out; trying to look into this is beginning to seem pretty pointless."

Lonny leaned down and kissed me. "I can think of better things for you to do."

"I'm sure you can. I can think of better things for me to do, too. Like concentrate on my job. Which, little though it pays, pays a whole lot better than amateur detective work. It's just that Casey ..." I stopped, unable to finish the sentence. That Casey hadn't wanted to die, my mind said. That I was angry at all that talent snuffed out, that Casey wasn't meant to be dead. If someone had killed him, I would find out who.

Getting out of bed, I enjoyed Lonny's admiring glance at my partially clothed body as I pulled my sweater on. I put my arms around him briefly and kissed him. "Thank you," I said, "that was nice."

He knew what I meant. "Trial run. I'll give you a call when I get back?"

"Right."

The smile between us then was intimate, shared, a result of that connectedness I'd felt last night, and I thought that Sara or no Sara, everything had changed. For the better.

Chapter SIXTEEN

I walked in my own front door at eight o'clock that sunny rain-washed morning; Lonny and I had shared coffee and rolls at a local bakery before he took off for the mountains, and I felt warm and sated. Belting out "Red River Valley" as I started doing the dishes, I was grateful for Bret's conspicuous absence. I can't carry a tune, but I like to sing-when I'm alone.

Judging by the sleeping bag and piles of clothes scattered around the living room, I wasn't done with my boarder yet. He'd probably found a new girl, but in all likelihood it would be a one-night relationship.

Ah well, none of my business. Except I didn't want him living here forever. I shuffled his stuff into one pile and cleaned the living room, thinking of Lonny. Would I want Lonny living here forever? I didn't know, but I enjoyed considering the question.

When the house was neat, I gave serious thought to the day. Detective work? Staring at my pager, which sat on the kitchen table, black and implacable, I realized I'd have to stick to in-county investigating. Jim and I took it in turn to be on call on Sundays, and today was my turn. Sure as hell that pager would beep if I left the general vicinity of Santa Cruz.

As it happened, I wasn't given a lot of time to worry about it. I'd barely finished making my grocery list when the pager shrilled in its determined, insistent way-that sound so familiar to overworked veterinarians.

The caller turned out to be a woman whose gelding had a swollen sheath, one of those non-emergency "emergencies" we got from time to time. I explained patiently and at length that a swollen sheath was not, generally speaking, a problem which needed immediate attention; the horse's sheath would have to get as big or bigger than a cantaloupe for there to be any question of him having a problem urinating.